DISAPPOINTMENT WITH A SIDE OF PICKLES

Disappointment With A Side Of Pickles

Sub shops always get my order wrong.

I cringe every time someone suggests eating at a sub shop. It tends to be on road trips or when people are in a hurry, when there aren’t other options to consider or time for negotiation. But it’s just as frustrating every single time.

Just going in one makes me start to feel anxious, because there’s no way to actually make it work. The “veggie” sub option is usually full of things I can’t or won’t eat, and trying to make modifications makes it even more complicated. And then, even with spending what feels like forever at the counter or customizing an order on the app, I’ve never just walked into a sub shop and gotten my order made correctly.

There’s always meat or some type of cheese I’m unfamiliar with; sometimes, I’ve had mushrooms, which disgust me deeply and I can still usually taste even after removing them. I’ve wondered, sometimes, if I’m a supertaster, because I seem to be able to taste things very strongly even when they’re supposed to be mild or distinguish flavors of things others can’t tell apart. It just makes something like this more difficult.

I try to watch what’s going on behind the counter, but on a road trip, I feel like I can’t inconvenience the other people I’m with. It’s easier to order on the phone or through an app, and if everyone but me gets theirs right, it’s hard to make a fuss. After all, it is technically my fault. It’s my phobia, my obsessions, my rigidity that prevents me from ordering without modifications.

I know I should be used to this by now, but it somehow still feels disappointing every time I go to a sub shop. When I see the words “only” next to certain things and then other things show up on the sandwich, I can’t help but feel like some sort of weirdo who can’t just order the normal people sandwich and be done. I don’t know 

I’ve had a lot of similar experiences at other types of restaurants, but it usually plays out in different ways. The looks and the embarrassment stay the same, but I’ve had several times where it’s gone even further.

At a lunch with my coworkers at my old job, where we were sitting at a table with over a dozen people, I ordered pasta at a restaurant that wasn’t Italian, but still threw in a few dishes. It was technically on the menu, but the waitress turned me into the butt of a joke when she announced to the table that I was ordering like a “picky little kid.” Everyone turned to look at me, and the time between that and the next order felt like a decade. I couldn’t wait to flee to the bathroom and stay there until the conversation would pass me by. I slunk back to the table later, ashamed.

And at a convention, one of my favorite places to be, I went with my best friend and their family to an Italian restaurant. They went out of their way to go there for me, but I found meat in my spaghetti marinara. Upset, I tried to switch dishes with my friend who got the cheese ravioli, only to find meat in there as well. At this point, I’d tried enough of the food to worry about the meat potentially making me throw up, and I was obsessing worse than I had in quite a long time as the waitress couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t just eat the dishes as-is.

My allergy provides a convenient excuse for many moments like this, but it’s not foolproof. I can’t pretend to be allergic to something I’m not in a particularly convincing manner, nor do I appreciate the way some people take allergies less seriously because they think everyone’s faking.

I definitely understand the rationale, though – for people who respect allergies, it’s a quick way out of a situation that’s making me anxious. And it helps in a culture where, as one of my favorite Tumblr posts says, if people find out someone can eat something but doesn’t like it, “people will hound them, mock them, coax them, harass them, try to force them to eat it, or even trick them into eating it, and they will never hear the end of it.” (from a-spoon-is-born)

So, when I go to a sub shop, or any other place where I feel the need to modify what’s on the menu even slightly, all of that is going through my head. Not just the negative experiences I’ve had, but possible comebacks if I get questioned, ways to interrupt food being made incorrectly, and what mistakes I’m willing to put up with on that particular menu.

I understand that making food to order is complicated and not necessarily possible – for instance, if sandwiches are premade, or if something’s already mixed in the sauce. But for me, these experiences are just another reminder that I’m different. And here’s the thing – I don’t need a reminder of that. On days when I’m feeling frustrated or ashamed of something already, it just compounds what I already know – and on days when I’m doing really well, it feels like a setback because no matter how hard I try, there are some textures, smells, and types of food that I’m not ready or willing to try.

I do my best to present as neurotypical or “normal” as possible, and times like these throw a big wrench in my plans, my self-confidence, and my ability to eat a decent meal. It’s something I’m still learning to live with and something I may never fully get used to. And it’s something I bring to your attention for a reason: even if you’re not in the food service industry, you can help people like me in this situation in several ways:

·      Try to be tolerant if someone’s taking a long time to analyze the menu or asks for help determining what things are. As someone trying to introduce new foods in my diet, I sometimes don’t know what ingredients are or what they taste like, and people with more varied palates can offer explanations.

·      If someone seems to be ashamed of what they’re ordering, draw attention away from them. It’s embarrassing enough to do a special order without having a whole table of people watching and commenting.

·      Stick up for your friend or loved one if anyone is making inappropriate comments, and help them speak up for themselves if they’re having trouble getting what they need.

·      Even if what someone is ordering seems funny to you, it may be deeply embarrassing to the person ordering it. They might seem okay with you making jokes, but it might hurt more than you’ll ever know.

·      If a particular place or type of cuisine causes a lot of stress for someone, try to visit those places less when you’re with them – that way, you won’t completely lose out on a place you enjoy, but your friend also won’t have to feel stressed.

Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.

REFLECTIONS ON ONE YEAR HERE

Reflections On One Year Here

On my very first trip to Chicago, I hunted for an apartment.

Last year this time, I was looking at a variety of buildings in a city I’d never visited. I heard of the Bean and deep-dish pizza but that was about it – and there I was, about to move.

Before moving here, I was living in a small town in Pennsylvania, close to many of my friends and extended family. I was moving to a big city – something I hadn’t done since my miserable grad school experience – and I knew only one person who lived several hours away. I didn’t even know anyone at my new job except the people who I interviewed with, who seemed nice but were still strangers.

I had no idea if I was doing the right thing, but I was ready to leave small-town life. I could only hope I’d do well in the new job and make some new friends and get through that initial period of loneliness that’s happened after every time I’ve moved.

This morning, I got an email in my work inbox congratulating me on a year at my job that was no longer new. I told my boss, who I now consider a friend, and she was thrilled for me. And best of all, I had several people to write to outside of work to share the happy news.

I won’t deny that my first winter was hard. Even though I’d lived in the northeast for years, I was completely unprepared for Chicago winters, especially the wind (and the polar vortex days when it was too cold to even go outside). I was planning to start a lot of new activities when I moved, but found out that things tend to go on hiatus around this time and begin again in the spring, which meant a long, lonely winter. The only group I managed to find that did activities all winter, my Pokemon Go friend group, was the best thing that could have happened to me.

I found them my first weekend, and quickly became part of the group. It may not seem like the most sociable thing in the world to spend a lot of time playing video games, but Pokemon Go in particular helped me a ton after a stressful move. I found people to talk to my first weekend there, after going to the Lincoln Park Zoo for an event, and as I started playing more, I learned my way around Chicago by following pokemon through the map of the Loop and beyond.

When I first found the group a year ago, I was so stressed from the move and leaving my friends and hearing that my dog was sick that I thought my brain would just explode. But now, I have a kind, caring, supportive community, and I know I won’t have another lonely winter.

Last year, I couldn’t have imagined things going this well.

During the moving process, my beloved red Honda Civic, Marian (named for the protagonist of Dragon Age 2, one of my favorite video games), had squirrels under the hood. Not only did they leave nuts that I’m deathly allergic to, but they also prevented my car from going over 4 mph and left me unable to do my own chores, shopping, and other necessities during my last week in Pennsylvania.

I had to say goodbye to friends who I know are far better at communicating in person as opposed to online, and it was incredibly difficult for me to hold my tongue even though I knew I’d basically be losing the close bonds we had.

I was also going to a new job, one that I had no idea if I would like. I could very easily be moving from one job with a toxic work environment to another, even if my new boss sounded nice on the phone.

I was terrified that my apartment would be like my grad school dorm, filled with cockroaches until I got help from the local police in confronting my stubborn landlord.

All of this coalesced into one: I was terrified because I, a person who needs to know everything to feel calm, knew nothing.

And now, a year later, I’m thrilled at how far I’ve come. I’ve made friends, I live in an apartment that has its flaws but is certainly not infested with anything, and enjoy my job. I’ve also made strides in trying new foods, being more open about what’s helpful and harmful for me, and I’ve started this blog.

Writing for No Shame On U has been one of the highlights of my year in Chicago. I love the ability to show what life can be like with mental illness, and it heartens me to see likes, shares, and responses from people who have learned something new or found my words interesting. It’s a thrill to be writing for you, and I hope this year is just the beginning of much more blogging, sharing, and stigma-squashing to come! 

Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.

WHEN CHANGING PLANS ISN'T GIVING UP

When Changing Plans Isn’t Giving Up

Two weeks into National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), many writers consider calling it quits. The inspiration that carries many through the first week or two wanes, and the word count of 50,000 seems insurmountable. There’s a point every year when I feel like giving up, and it usually happens around this time as well.

I’m not giving up on NaNoWriMo, but the “hump” of the writing challenge makes me think of the time I did choose to give up on something, and how giving up is not inherently bad.

In my senior year of college, I became extremely worried about my future. I had no idea what I was going to do next, but I knew that I couldn’t move back home to a place where I had no friends and no real prospects for a career. Like many other people my age with no clue what the future offered, I decided to apply for grad school.

I got into a school that I thought would be a good fit for me, and thanks to the scholarship I received, I believed that the school had faith in me and knew I would do well. I tried to be as confident as possible when I left my college, which felt so much like home that it truly hurt to leave, and headed to grad school.

The school I switched to was urban, as compared to my extremely rural college where I knew the names of the cows who provided my milk and ice cream. I’d never lived in the middle of a city before, and I felt overwhelmed before I even hit the city limits. My dorm room was expensive, tiny, and infested with cockroaches, and as I started going to class, I found myself with few friends and very little interest in the course material.

I kept going, though, because I thought that giving up would make me a failure. I pushed my anxiety and stress and sadness aside and it worked – for the first few months, at least. And then, since this was a Master of Education degree, I had to student teach.

Anyone who’s met me knows that I’m incredibly chatty and don’t have a problem talking to new people, but in the classroom, I felt so anxious when facing down the room full of twelfth graders barely younger than me that I didn’t know what to do. My stress level soared with each lesson, whenever I was faced with blank stares from my students or disapproving reviews from my two mentors.

The teaching style of my grad school clashed with the way I learned, and for the first time in years, I found myself struggling to keep my grades up. I got so nervous before each of my student teaching days that I had trouble convincing myself to go in the room and would sometimes even count down the minutes until it was over.

But I was determined to never lose a battle to anxiety. I’ve seen OCD as a fight for as long as I can remember, and whoever wins the most battles wins the war. The more anxious I became, the harder I fought against it.

And then November hit.

Like all the other years since I discovered NaNoWriMo, I was determined to write a 50,000-word novel in a month. And for the first time since I started grad school, I was finally doing something I loved.

I started sneaking my novel notebook into my free periods during student teaching, and during my grad school classes, I’d scribble novel notes in the margins. It was the one thing that made me happy, and I kept wishing that teaching felt like that for me.

Not long after NaNoWriMo ended – with another success – I was called into the grad school department head’s office and told that “we only want the best, and you’re not the best.” They gave me tissues and I cried not because I was sad to stop student teaching, but because I was sure I was a failure and I’d have to move back home after all.

But then, they offered me a deal: I could stay and do my last semester of the accelerated program, and in the end, I’d receive a degree but no teaching certification. In the last semester, I could take some elective classes beyond the department, and I was no longer locked to a career in teaching.

That first night, I felt overwhelmed. But when I woke up the next morning, I felt freer than I had since my senior year of college.

Suddenly, there was no pressure. I could do what I wanted for my career, and I finally knew that what I wanted to do was find a way to write. It didn’t need to be novels or even short stories, which I wrote at a frenzied pace that last semester, but something that used the talent I loved instead of made me anxious all day would be wonderful.

Long story short, the day before graduation, I was offered a job running a small-town newspaper. I was there for two years before I moved to Chicago, and although the work environment was not the best, I was thankful every day for the fact that I was finally doing something I loved.

In that last semester, I sometimes felt like a failure, especially when I’d see my classmates looking at me strangely or when they’d stop talking about teaching plans when I got nearby. But around then, I realized that there are different kinds of failure.

I no longer see my master’s degree as a failure. Sure, I didn’t do what I set out to do, but by changing my goals, I managed to find a career path I’m enjoying so much more. I’ve been a journalist for three years now, and the career offers me the opportunity to write during the day and then work on my stories and novels at home. I have a life filled with my favorite hobby, which certainly isn’t a failure.

This incident showed me the importance of knowing when to fight my anxiety and when to seek an alternate path. If I stayed at the school for a second year, ignoring the things about the city and the grad school program that made me miserable, I might have had the time I needed to feel comfortable in the classroom. But I would have missed out on so much more and fought so many battles that I really didn’t need to fight.

Ever since then, I try to choose my battles with anxiety and OCD carefully. Not every opportunity I don’t take is a failure, and saving my energy for the battles that matter has helped me work through more problems like my disordered eating, exposure therapy for phobias, and more.

NaNoWriMo is something I don’t think I’ll ever give up on, but I’m okay with giving up on certain other things now. It’s a tough balance to find, but thanks to the lack of stress from a career I’m enjoying, I have the time to sort through what’s worth it. And that is worth much more in the long run than a certification that would make me nominally not a failure of that program, but would make me fail in my most important mission in life: living happily with mental illness.

Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.

A TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE

A Trip Down Memory Lane

On a recent trip home, I found a few old flash drives that I used during middle and high school. On one of them, I found my first attempt at writing a story like the ones I write for this blog every week – sharing my experience with OCD.

The story I found is called “The Scepter and the Scourge” – I’d discovered the word “scourge” in computer camp and liked the way it applied to how constant and debilitating OCD was in my life at that time, and “scepter” was a nod to my brand-new love for Lord of the Rings and the association I formed between the obsessions in my head and my writing talent. I remember writing bits and pieces of the story, trying to come up with titles for each little section, and it was quite interesting to delve into my past.

The story begins with my first memories of my diagnosis. I’m pretty sure I was about nine years old at this point, as this was when I met the psychiatrist who’s been by my side ever since. She had a plastic brain in her lap, and she used it to explain to me about serotonin receptors and other things as I traced the corresponding parts on my own head. The biggest part I remember of that day is the question I asked her when she finally used the word “disease:”

“Is there a cure?”

“No.”

I remember feeling horrified that there was no easy answer, wondering if it was a disease like cancer that could just kill you outright or if it was something to live the rest of my life with. Either option sounded terrifying, and the best option she could offer me was a daily dose of Paxil. I’d forgotten how orange it was until I reread my own words.

But just as I’m going into this low point, the story shifts: I’m on the couch with Dad, as he urges me to look up from my Calvin and Hobbes comic book and watch Fellowship of the Ring with him. I was convinced it was for nerds, and being a nerd was a bad thing. But, as my younger self wrote, “everything I knew before and everything I thought after changed when I got my first glimpse of Lord of the Rings.”

It was the positive side of OCD, the one I’d looked for ever since that day in my psychiatrist’s office. I wrote about the euphoria that made me want to watch the movies from start to finish, even my willingness to work out while doing so – something I usually hated. I wrote about all the questions I asked Dad – all the mechanics of the world, history, geography, and the backstories of all of my favorite characters – until I could tell that he was wary of answering my questions in case he encouraged the obsession further.

And then my favorite part: I was sitting on the exercise bike, watching the credits of Return of the King roll by, and I couldn’t wait to start the whole trilogy again. I wanted – no, needed – a way to take this passion and carry it forward, and in that moment, I came up with my first original character within Tolkien’s universe. Her name – which I have never written in public before – is Ia (pronounced EYE-uh).

Along with the thrill of my favorite story ever invented came a crushing sense of guilt. I knew it was wrong to do this – it felt like some unholy combination of cheating, copying, and obsessing – but I was just a kid, and it was the equivalent of Chanukah and my birthday and enough snow to build a snowman and my favorite pasta dinner all at once.

I put in this character everything I wanted myself to be: brave, strong, mature, beautiful. Everything I disliked about myself, I tried to erase from this character, but I couldn’t quite get rid of things like fears and picky eating. After all, I wrote what I knew.

I wrote her story in my head all the time, creating the kind of high I can really only feel while deeply immersed in a story. All the possibilities of adventures within Middle-Earth felt intoxicating, and thanks to the repetitive nature of my thoughts, the feeling never waned.

In “The Scepter and the Scourge,” I relearn that her birthday is on March 23 (I was very much into zodiac signs, believing that the bravery of my own, Capricorn, might show up one day), and find the name of the original story file, which I believe to have been lost with an old computer (Forever Young, because of her journeys with immortal elves). I remember that her first story snippet involved a bully learning to be kind to her and accept her, which was one of my dearest wishes as a child.

But with the high came the shame, the knowledge that writing Ia’s story was just another obsession. Just like the ones about throwing up or drinking out of water fountains or anything else in my head. And so I did everything I could to keep it a secret. I embedded the document so deeply in a maze of files that I hoped Dad would never be able to find it, and in “The Scepter and the Scourge,” I detail the path: C:\Users\Michelle\Documents\My Private Stuff\Why are you snooping in here\I mean it\ok if that's the way you want to be\3\how did you get in here\ok now here are my files\Forever Young.

I hoped the guilt trip of clicking through all those subfolders would be enough, but in my fear, I deleted things I wanted to keep, I shredded any papers I wrote her story on in real life, and I kept my happiness in my head just as much as I tried to keep the obsessive thoughts that controlled my life.

The two most valuable things I found in “The Scepter and the Scourge” are a short section of Ia’s story that I never deleted – rife with spelling mistakes and contrived plot that somewhat makes me cringe, but is still somehow beautiful – and the following observation that I remember literally stopped me in my tracks as I got off the treadmill one day towards the beginning of high school – and, as the story ends:

“Out of all the roles that Lord of the Rings played in my life, whether as a fascination or a comfort or a cure, the most important thing about the movies is that they gave me Ia. And Ia gave me the strength to continue many times when I feared I would fail, and the courage to face each new day with an open mind, and the audacity to seek adventure rather than hide from it. Ia was a friend when I had none and an inspiration to write when my hands were sitting still on the keyboard.

But most of all, Ia made me an author. If I can create a character as strong as Ia in someone else’s world, why can’t I create such a strong character in a world I invent? Better yet, why can’t I be the character, in the world that we all live in? I know that I am ashamed of certain things about myself. I know that my OCD has hindered me from opportunities in the past, such as going to summer camp or drinking orange juice. However, I unconsciously put this one thing I wish I could cut out of myself into Ia, and I find that where it weakened me, it gave her strength.

Her ability to focus single-mindedly on one thing for extended periods of time is what gives her power. It’s what makes her do what she does. I’m not a doctor, but I’ve gotten pretty good at telling if someone else has OCD, and I can safely say that she has some form of it, at least the intense focus and dedication that comes with the frantic worrying.

When I realized it, it really made me think. My experience with my brain has not been good (I even looked up lobotomy on the Internet for a short while in the beginning to see if I could ‘fix’ myself), but only I have the potential to make it better—in short, to give myself a happy ending just like I gave Ia. So you might ask me, when has my worst trait ever been a blessing instead of a curse? Well, let me tell you:

Now.”

Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.

NEVER GIVE UP NOVELING

Never Giving Up Noveling

This week, I’ve begun a challenge that takes up nearly all of my free time in the month of November for the past nine years – National Novel Writing Month!

As part of National Novel Writing Month (usually abbreviated to NaNoWriMo), participants write a novel containing a minimum of 50,000 words solely during the month of November. You’re allowed to do as much planning as you want ahead of time, but you can’t actually start writing – or counting your words – until midnight on November 1.

I discovered the challenge in high school, and quickly latched on. I started November with a vague science fiction idea about a disease spread by mushrooms. Mushrooms and disease make for a typical Ellie OCD idea, but I had no idea how much the challenge would shake up my typical routine.

I’ve always felt most comfortable as a creature of habit. I know when I wake up, how my mornings go, my routine for my school – and later, work – day, evenings, and bedtime. I, thankfully, don’t have any obsessive thoughts about following this routine (especially bedtime, which tends to fall by the wayside if I get engrossed in a video game, book, or conversation with a friend), but I always feel best when I know what’s happening next.

Changes to my routine can make my anxiety skyrocket, so planning for something like NaNoWriMo can involve a lot more than just brainstorming ideas for my new novel.

The basic plan for completing NaNoWriMo on time is writing 1,667 words every day, but in practice, it rarely happens that way. I always try to go ahead, planning for fewer words around Thanksgiving if I have plans with family and keeping a buffer of at least one day in case something happens. It stresses me out a lot if I fall behind, because I’ve never lost.

No matter what’s been going on in my life, I take the commitment to write a novel in November very seriously. I think about the timing and the schedules ahead of time and if I sign up on the website, I don’t quit for any reason. I didn’t even quit last year, when I had just moved to Chicago a few days before November started, had just started working at my new job, and was just informed that my dog had cancer (thankfully, he beat it, and is doing very well!). It took a lot of frustration, tears, and long walks in the cold, but I didn’t give up.

NaNoWriMo, for me, is a path to the dream I’ve known as long as I’ve had OCD – to be a published author. I’d love to walk into a bookstore and find my own book there, perhaps even find someone buying or reading it, and feel like my ideas are changing the world. It’s what inspires me to write every day in November, even if it’s cold, I’m tired, I’m busy at work, or any other excuse.

Most of all, I’d love to use some content I create during NaNoWriMo to help people. I originally started this blog to help reduce the stigma of mental illness by sharing my everyday experiences, and through conversations with my friends and family who read my blog every week, I feel like I’m helping to change perspectives.

I don’t always write mental health-related content on purpose during NaNoWriMo. Sometimes, I’ve written stories to help me deal with things – it’s my favorite way to release anxiety from trauma – and other times, it creeps into my narratives no matter what I’m writing. After all, it’d be great to see more characters with mental illness in fantasy, science fiction, and other genres where representation is rare.

Over the years, I’ve written novel-length stories about a medieval woman suspected to be a witch living with PTSD, a knight with paranoid delusions, a milkmaid-turned-revolutionary who learns how to overcome her anxiety, and more. In all these stories, I also tell mine – the story of someone whose mind is made for obsessions but also for stories, and who uses both of those to create something positive.

Thanks to my OCD and a healthy dose of competitiveness, I’ve written six 50,000-word novels in past Novembers and had another two years with over 100,000 words in the month. The sense of accomplishment is well worth changing my routine, no matter how much overthinking I do before November starts – and by this time in the month, I’m settled in a different routine where I can do what needs to get done every day while working on my long-term goals.

This year, as I write the tale of an exiled priestess learning her way around the world, I hope to add a ninth notch to my belt as well as stick to my philosophy about living with OCD: never give up!

Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.